


Out of Time

by etcetera_nine



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Crowley Needs a Hug (Good Omens), Established Relationship, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Reincarnation, The Apocalypse, and Crowley does not feel fine, but for real this time, celestial godfathers, it's the end of the world as we know it, to the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2019-10-22
Packaged: 2020-12-28 14:42:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21138371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etcetera_nine/pseuds/etcetera_nine
Summary: After the world doesn’t end, Aziraphale wants to keep an eye on their human friends. Watch over them, make sure they’re happy, that they have good lives. Crowley’s not entirely on board with the idea, but hey—they’ve spent the last six millennia living amongst humans. What could go wrong?As it turns out… a lot.





	Out of Time

In the end, to everyone’s surprise, it’s Madame Tracy who goes first, slipping away in her sleep one night in the bungalow she shares with Sergeant Shadwell in Cornwall. When he wakes up, she’s cold beside him, a little leftover smile from her last dream still on her face. 

She is 67, and it’s been five years since the Armageddon that didn’t. 

Adam and his friends turn up for the service, Adam having convinced their parents that traveling to Cornwall for the funeral of a woman they’ve never met before is a totally normal thing for 16-year-olds to do. He was always good with bargaining. 

“Gets that from my side,” Crowley says, whisking the Bentley west on the A30 down from London. That morning, the car had suddenly and surprisingly found itself idling outside Paddington Station, spacious enough for all the teenagers it was picking up from Oxford, plus Dog, plus Anathema and Newt. 

Aziraphale is pleased to see everyone. Crowley pretends not to be, but no one is fooled. 

After the service, when the young ones are quietly comforting Sergeant Shadwell, who looks lost and is blowing his nose continuously into an ancient handkerchief, Aziraphale says, “We should keep an eye on them.” 

“On who?” Behind his sunglasses, Crowley’s eyebrows are confused. 

“You know,” Aziraphale says. “Them. Everyone. Just... check in every once in a while.” 

Crowley gives a little scowl. “You can’t protect them from being hurt, Aziraphale. That’s not how this works. And it’s just going to make you sad when they… Shuffle off their mortal coil, or what have you.” 

Aziraphale frowns. He’s never really played favorites before. Human lives are terribly short; Crowley’s had naps that have lasted longer. And Crowley is right—he does want to protect them from being hurt, to shield them from harm. There’s something about this ragamuffin bunch of people that’s touched his heart in a way that no humans have done before. They saved the world together, after all. “Well,” he says. “It’s not like we have anything better to do, is it?” 

It’s true. They don’t. Heaven and Hell want nothing to do with them; they have no more official duties. They’re immortal, and they’re retired. 

***

Shadwell _ is _ lost without Madame Tracy. He blunders around the bungalow, shouting at everything he bumps into, more than occasionally breaking into fits of sobs. Crowley and Aziraphale try to keep him company, keep the place clean with a few minor miracles every so often, and Anathema very kindly comes down from Tadfield once in a while to make sure he’s eating more than tins of beans or spaghetti hoops on toast. 

But it’s a lost cause, and he’s gone within a year. 

“Well. That was depressing,” Aziraphale says. They’re standing outside Shangri-La, watching the paramedics load Shadwell’s sheet-covered corporeal form into an ambulance, ready to go to the coroner. 

Crowley sighs. “See? Told you so. Dead people usually are.” 

YOU’D BE SURPRISED, a voice from behind them says, the words falling heavily, like tombstones. But when they turn around, no one is there. 

Despite Shadwell’s sad end, Aziraphale resolves that they keep watch over the rest of them anyway. It feels like the right thing to do. 

“It could be…” Aziraphale thinks. “Our new Arrangement. Between us and the humans.” 

Crowley sighs. “To the world, then, eh angel?” 

Aziraphale smiles. “To the world.” 

The Bentley is quiet all the way back to London. In the silence, Aziraphale can almost hear the hitch in Crowley’s breathing. 

Almost. 

***

Anathema and Newt have good lives. 

They stay in Tadfield. Newt becomes a teacher. Although his trousers are always a little short and his glasses are always falling down his nose, his students like him anyway. He’s patient and smiles a lot. He doesn’t use email, which is odd, but eventually he turns 40 and his tendency to eschew technology becomes easier to explain. 

After almost a decade of putting it off, Anathema marries Newt. She promptly gets pregnant and then, nine months later, after a failed epidural and 20 hours of laboring in hospital, followed by an emergency Cesarean, gives birth to a daughter, whom they call Joy. 

“Well that fucking _ sucked_,” Anathema says to Newt, who is holding their baby and looking very pleased with himself that he didn’t pass out, even once. 

They’ve turned up to say congratulations with flowers and several gender-neutral grey and yellow babygrows. Crowley murmurs something like, “‘S’probably my fault. Sorry about that.” 

Anathema frowns at him. “How could that _ possibly _be your fault?” 

Aziraphale wonders if she’s forgotten what they told her, which was the truth. Maybe it’s the hormones. 

Behind his sunglasses, Crowley gives Aziraphale a guilty look. 

***

Five years later Anathema is a registered doula, midwife and lactation consultant. It’s the closest thing to witchcraft that comes with a paycheck, Anathema tells them, and they both wholeheartedly agree. 

When Newt is 58, he has a brain embolism whilst queuing at the post office. Anathema lets her hair grow in gray, stops mowing the yard, and acquires a large collection of black cats. She joins Joy for two weeks every summer in the south of France, and spends the other 50 weeks a year cultivating rumors that she’s the last living witch in England. Her house is very popular on Halloween; she gives out full-size candy bars. 

Some days she remembers Aziraphale and Crowley. Some days she doesn’t. When they come to visit, she always lets them in anyway. They have nice auras.

When she is 86, Anathema Device, alone in Jasmine Cottage, chokes on a ginger root pill. 

Joy and her partner and their children have lived in France for decades; there are no more witches in England. 

“I don’t like this,” Crowley says at the cemetery. He keeps wiping his hands on his trousers, like his palms are stained with grave dirt. Joy looks old now, and tired, crying on her partner’s shoulder with great, wrecking sobs. Before the funeral started, she had stared at them blankly, with no recognition. Aziraphale remembers her long black plaits, her gap-toothed smile when she lost her front two teeth. The way Anathema and Newt would walk with her on the green, swinging her up and down between their joined hands. He blinked, and she’s lived half a century. No one knows who they are here, except for Adam. “I don’t like this at all. It never gets easier.” 

IT NEVER DOES, a voice from behind them agrees. 

“What was that, my dear?” Aziraphale asks. 

Crowley sniffs, and Aziraphale pretends not to hear. Behind his dark glasses, Aziraphale knows his eyes are red. 

***

Adam’s friends have good lives, too. 

Wensleydale goes to university and becomes an accountant in Milton Keynes. Brian doesn’t and manages the local supermarket in Tadfield. They lose touch after school, the way most childhood friends who go their separate ways do, and don’t speak for a decade. When they meet again, by chance, in a bar off Trafalgar Square, they are both so happy to see each other that they tear up, then immediately blame it on allergies. But within an hour, they’re holding hands. 

Within two years, they’re married. 

Aziraphale and Crowley crash the wedding. At the reception, they’re re-introduced to a 30-year-old Pepper, who vaguely remembers them as Adam’s godfathers that she met one summer, back when she was a kid. She’s starting a nonprofit, she tells them, dancing next to them with her girlfriend while the band plays old Motown songs, to help young women get started in local politics. 

(Both Aziraphale and Crowley are pleased with this, for different reasons. They may be retired, but old instincts die hard.) 

“It was nice to meet you,” she calls to them, as her girlfriend dances her to the other side of the room. “Mr. Roley, Mr. Fell! See you at Adam’s wedding, maybe?” 

“Like that’ll ever happen,” her girlfriend laughs, and then they’re gone. 

Aziraphale’s face feels funny from smiling in a way that isn’t true. “How can she not remember? We spent all those summers in Tadfield. We just _ saw _ her, at Madame Tracy’s funeral…” 

(They have, as usual, Aziraphale thinks, not been at all competent.) 

“That was nearly 15 years ago, angel,” Crowley murmurs. “Come on. The servers are starting to bring dessert out.” He steers them back to their table, his hand warm on Aziraphale’s shoulder. 

Adam is there too, like he always is. He’s already started on his cake. Under the table, Dog, now a daschund, waits patiently for the leftovers. 

Adam smiles at them, reassuring. He always remembers. 

***

They check in on Warlock from time to time, too. He is a completely average data entry clerk in a very average suburb in America. His thoughts and actions are neither particularly good nor particularly bad. He has an average life, an average death, and a minimal impact on the world around him. 

Aziraphale thinks of Warlock as a child, his sticky little hand gently stroking the wing of a butterfly. Of how he would fall asleep with his head in Crowley’s lap, in the shade of one of the trees in the Dowlings’ vast back garden.

Warlock never recognizes Aziraphale or Crowley. 

This is the only time he appears in this story. 

“I hate America,” Crowley says. He is clenching his jaw very tightly. “Let’s go, angel.” 

***

When Joy is first learning to walk, they visit Jasmine Cottage for Christmas. It’s just the four of them and the baby, and a fireplace and a pretty tree and homemade mince pies and the tiniest bit of snow that Aziraphale swears up and down he has nothing to do with. 

“What a lovely day,” Aziraphale sighs, when dinner is over and they’re all sitting snugly on the couple’s overstuffed sofa and armchairs, drinking cocoa that Crowley thoughtfully spiked. He looks across the room to Joy, cuddled in Newt’s arms. “I hope you have wonderful memories of your first Christmas, my dear Joy.” 

Newt, only slightly drunk, pets his daughter’s dark hair. “I’ll make sure every Christmas you have is as wonderful as this one.” 

“Guys,” says Anathema, ever the practical witch. “She’s barely one. She’s never going to remember any of this.” 

But Crowley’s hand is warm on his neck, and he’s wonderfully tipsy from the boozy cocoa and the glow from the fire, and he can’t imagine ever forgetting this moment, or any of it. 

“Then I shall remember it for her,” he tells them, and Crowley puts his head on his shoulder. 

***

After Anathema dies, Adam’s friends go in quick succession. 

Brian is first. He has dementia, but his children are still arguing about whether to put him in a care home. One day he walks out the door of his son’s house and down the road, then down another road. He’s hit by a bus on the high street. By the time Aziraphale and Crowley arrive, the only thing they can do is pat the bus driver’s shoulders and try to reassure him that it wasn’t his fault. 

Pepper has a heart attack while watching TV at night in her living room. It’s a messy death; she’s alone and she fights it. When her daughter-in-law finds her the next morning, Aziraphale and Crowley have been and gone, and Pepper looks at peace. 

Wensleydale’s death is the only one they actually witness. He’s heavily sedated, in the last stages of organ failure, in a hospital bed in Hampshire. It’s just after midnight; his family has gone home. He and Crowley are there, and Adam has turned up. Dog is a greying schnauzer. Adam looks tired, and old—much older than Aziraphale remembers, and it makes him afraid. Time is going too fast for him, it seems. 

(“Dear boy,” Aziraphale calls to him in greeting, and Adam looks behind himself, out into the hospital’s hallway, because it’s been so long since anyone called him boy.) 

Wensleydale sleeps the sleep of the drugged through an hour of catching up and an hour of small talk, then several hours of silence. Aziraphale is about to suggest that Adam find a spare bed to take a nap when Wensleydale wakes up, blinking. 

“I know you,” he says, not to them but through them, to the space behind them. “I remember you.” 

Maybe it’s because Wensleydale is dying at that very moment. Maybe it’s because Adam is there, too. But they turn and they see him: a flash of dark wings, a skeletal hand, two pinpricks of light under a black hood. 

THEY ALWAYS DO, IN THE END, Azrael says, and then he’s gone, and so is Wensleydale. 

They’re silent for a minute, trying to process. Adam stands up. 

“Well,” he says. “Guess I’m next.” He nods at them. “It’s been… It’s been real. Thanks for everything. I’ll see you around.” He pauses. “Take care of yourselves, will you?” 

“We’ll try.” It hurts to talk. “Mind how you go,” he manages. Adam nods and leaves the room, Dog limping behind him. 

When he’s gone, Crowley stalks over to the window. Aziraphale doesn’t need to look to know that he’s crying. The sun is dawning slowly. 

“I hate this Arrangement,” Crowley says. “I hate it, I hate it.” 

“It’s nearly over,” Aziraphale tells him, and closes Wensleydale’s blank eyes with his fingertips. 

That turns out to be a lie. Even so, they never see Adam again. 

***

Adam is… Adam is... 

Adam is a strange one. He’s no longer the antichrist, but not quite _ just _ a human. He’s not an angel, or a demon. He still has his powers, but only occasionally uses them, and rarely for his own benefit. Privately, Aziraphale and Crowley speculate that he’s still more powerful than the two of them combined. 

After the Armageddon that didn’t, Adam keeps in touch frequently, with calls and texts to Crowley’s mobile. He’s convinced his parents that the two of them are his godfathers, and that makes it easy to pop in and say hello every so often, to have him stay over for a weekend at the bookshop and take him up on the London Eye and on a Jack the Ripper tour and out for a curry on Brick Lane. 

Instead of going to university, Adam takes a gap year that lasts for the rest of his life. His love for Tadfield and his friends builds and builds, until it encompasses all of the world, and everyone in it. He sends them postcards from Japan, from Alaska, from Peru. He teaches English in Beijing, he picks fruit in California, he takes tickets at Euro Disney. He builds habitats for humanity, he joins the VSO, he works with Doctors Without Borders. 

(“Since when is he a doctor?” Crowley questions, peering over Aziraphale’s shoulder at the latest postcard.) 

Adam never gets married, he never has children, and he never mentions any relationships or any other friends, even in passing. But Dog always tags along on Adam’s adventures somehow, and every ten to fifteen years he dutifully changes to a different breed, loyal to the last. 

***

Joy dies when she is 73. They go to her funeral, which is in France. Crowley drives them the whole way. It takes 18 hours. 

The church is old, small in the way that old things seem, now. It’s crowded with mourners. 

Aziraphale attends the service, offering his condolences in his poor French. 

Crowley waits in the car. 

***

Every once in a while, Adam comes back home. 

“Brian and Wensleydale are splitting up,” he tells them glumly, from their sofa at their new flat in Edinburgh. They’d just—reluctantly—moved out of their lovely little cottage in the South Downs. They’d been there over a decade, and people were starting to pay attention to the fact that they weren’t aging. Those little villages aren’t like London, where no one notices—or cares—if you’re an immortal supernatural creature. Their Edinburgh flat is a compromise, the penthouse of a new, modern building that overlooks the Old Town. 

Aziraphale frowns, changing the cocoa he was about to hand over for two fingers of whisky. “But they just got married.” 

“That was a decade ago, angel,” Crowley says. He rubs his hand over his face. “Keep up.” 

“What’s the bloody point?” Adam mutters. He accepts the whisky and shoots it down in one go. 

***

They try to visit Adam over the years, but he moves around so much they can barely keep track. He always has the same phone number though, and sometimes they can get a hold of him on his computer. Crowley can usually tell where he is—“ish,” he says, waving his hand—which they speculate is due to a sort of leftover antichrist-ic influence, or perhaps something akin to the way Crowley can sense Aziraphale, and always knows just where to find him. But usually they’ll be thinking of checking up on him and he knocks on their door, back from a trip to tag penguins in the Falklands or study tortoises in the Galapagos Islands. 

Sometimes, though, he cloaks himself, on purpose, like he doesn’t want to be found. And then they can’t sense him at all—just like when they were searching for him to stop the Armageddon that didn’t, and they cocked it all up. 

He does this when Brian and Wensleydale divorce. When his mother dies of breast cancer, when his father dies of a stroke. A few other times in between, which they don’t ask about. When Brian dies, and then Pepper, and then Wensleydale. 

It lasts a few months, usually, a year or two at the most. Then he sends a postcard, or a text, or turns up at their door again. 

After they see him for the last time, they can’t find him for years. His phone is disconnected, emails go unanswered, letters come back unread. They stop by the last address they have for him—a sunny second-floor apartment with a balcony, in Athens—but a family lives there instead, and they have no forwarding address. 

Aziraphale wonders whether he’s gone off to die alone, like a wounded animal. He doesn’t voice the thought to Crowley. 

One day their doorbell rings and a deliveryman hands them an envelope and a cardboard box. In the envelope is a signed and notarized statement making Aziraphale and Crowley the executives of Adam’s estate, which contains a surprisingly large amount of savings. 

The cardboard box contains a wooden sword, a wooden set of scales, and a crown made of dried grass that looks like it would crumble if you breathed on it wrong. 

There’s also a small dog collar, with a little metal tag that’s shaped like a dogbone. “Dog” is engraved on the front. There’s nothing engraved on the back; there’s no need for anything else, because Dog, of course, could never be lost. 

When they receive all this they’re living in Manchester—it’s always been Crowley’s baby, and Aziraphale is pleasantly surprised at the calibre of the restaurants—but they bury the box in Tadfield, at the air force base, underneath several layers of earth and gravel and tarmac. It seems fitting. 

When they get home, Crowley takes his glasses off and puts them on the kitchen table. He looks pale and exhausted, swaying on his feet. It’s been 101 years since he held the antichrist in a picnic basket, and now the antichrist is dead. 

“I hate this,” he says. “I’m going to have a nap, angel.” 

“Shall I wake you for dinner?” Aziraphale calls after him, but he doesn’t answer. 

Instead, he sleeps for 11 years. 

When Crowley finally wakes up, he stumbles into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, a long crease from the pillow cutting across his cheek. “We have to go to India,” he says, but it comes out garbled from not speaking for more than a decade, so he has a drink of water while Aziraphale waits patiently, sitting at the kitchen table with his electronic newspaper. “We have to go to India,” he says again. “Something’s happening, I can feel it.” 

“Good morning to you too,” Aziraphale says, more fond than annoyed. He hands him his sunglasses. “Mind if we have breakfast first?” 

***

They’re not really sure what they’re looking for until they find it. And when they do, they realize it’s not a what, it’s a who. 

A small girl in a school uniform is waiting for them at the crossroads of two quiet streets in Jaipur. She has a cat curled at her feet. Three girls stand behind her: one is scowling, her arms crossed; one blinks at them behind thick glasses; one has chocolate on her face. 

“I’m Amita,” the girl—their girl—says. She has black hair, a thick fringe, and in her dark eyes is something old and familiar. She sticks out her hand. “What took you so long? I turned 11 two weeks ago.” 

Crowley pulls his sunglasses down to peer at her over the rims. “Well, fuck me,” he says, mildly. 

The cat hisses at him, and Amita’s scowling friend kicks him in the shin. “Watch your language, demon,” she says, and Crowley bursts into delighted laughter. 

Aziraphale takes Amita’s hand and shakes it slowly, with wonder. “Oh, my dear,” he says. “We have _ missed _you.” 

***

Amita may be the reincarnation of Adam—the antichrist, born again—but she is not Adam. She doesn’t look like him, act like him, or talk like him. But there’s something of him inside her, still, and it shines through when she bends the world to her will, tries to make it better, bit by bit. 

(She is a little afraid of dogs, though, so Dog has become Cat, but he never leaves her side all the same.)

Aziraphale loves her. She is bright and clever, full of ideas to fix things, to change things. Crowley loves her for exactly the same reasons, but he hates the cat. 

“Evil little bastard,” he says to it under his breath, whenever it slinks past. 

Amita loves cocoa, and books, and technology, and music. She loves Crowley and Aziraphale, loves their love story, asks them to tell it to her, over and over. How they met. How they _ knew_. 

She even lives with them for a while—her parents think she’s gone to England for university—and those few years are some of the happiest of Aziraphale’s long, long life. 

(They’re also some of the happiest years of Crowley’s life, even though Cat pukes on his pillow at least once a week, and he complains about having to wear a dressing gown when he comes out for breakfast in the mornings.) 

“Would it have been like this, do you think, if we could have had a child together?” Aziraphale asks him, one morning when they’re lying in bed. They’ve slept late; they can hear Amita making breakfast in their kitchen, singing along to one of the bands she likes, the sounds piping through the latest speakers that Crowley “installed.” 

Crowley squeezes his hand. “Best not to think about it, angel.” 

***

“When the world ends, what will happen to the two of you?” 

Aziraphale is helping Anathema with the washing up. From the window by the sink, they can see Newt and Joy out in the garden, kicking a football back and forth and laughing. Crowley lounges near them in a lawn chair, scrolling on his mobile and pretending he’s not watching them through his sunglasses. 

“What’s that, my dear?” Aziraphale finishes drying a glass, puts it back in the cupboard. In the background, the radio is playing a special report about climate change. 

Anathema is holding a plate in her hands, staring at her little family through the little window. “When the world ends. What will happen to the two of you?” 

Aziraphale tries a smile. “Well. I… I suppose there’s always Alpha Centauri.” He forces his smile wider. “Or maybe She’ll just… wipe the board clean and start the whole thing over again!” 

It’s meant to be a joke, but Anathema takes it seriously and exhales with relief. “Oh, good,” she tells him. “I’ve been worrying.” 

When Anathema looks away, Aziraphale drops his smile. Best not to think about it. 

***

Amita loves people. She loves helping them. She loves the world, and the world is a little better with her in it. 

When she dies, at 101, Aziraphale kisses her forehead and slides her eyelids shut with his thumb. “Rest now,” he tells her. “We’ll see you soon.” 

***

They find Alexei in an orphanage in Moscow. It’s a hard transition, watching over him after Amita, after Adam. There’s no softness, no kindness there. When he fixes one part of the world, it comes at the expense of another. Privately, they wonder if he’s trying to help, or to harm. 

Aziraphale’s empathy is tested. So is Crowley’s patience. For Adam’s sake, for Amita’s sake, for the world’s sake, they try. They relocate to be closer to him. They take him places he’s only heard about. They use Adam’s savings to give him what he needs, to give him a good life. They tell him their story. They show him their wings. 

But Adam and Amita had both been brought up with love, with friends, with family; Alexei has always been alone. 

“We’re here to help you,” Aziraphale pleads with him. “We’re your godfathers. Trust us. Let us help you, please.” 

He’ll fix things, Alexei tells them, but he doesn’t need them. He’s fine on his own. 

Dog snarls whenever they get too close. 

When Alexei dies, at 101, Aziraphale can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. Crowley, without saying anything, goes for another decade-long nap. 

***

While he sleeps, New York City is swallowed by floodwater. 

“I thought She wouldn’t do this again,” Crowley says, scrolling through the news inhumanly fast, minutes after he’s woken up. His voice is rough, scratchy. “She promised.” He looks at Aziraphale, pale and frightened and desperate. 

Aziraphale has spent the last 11 years watching parts of the place he loves best get destroyed, slowly and steadily. An iceberg here, an island there. 

They haven’t heard from Heaven or Hell at all in three centuries, since 2019. 

“Darling,” Aziraphale says. “I don’t think it’s Her.” 

***

Alaine is easier, after Alexei. They’re gentler, with none of the hardness that Crowley and Aziraphale spent decades trying to crack. 

But Alaine is also selfish. They come from a part of America where tornadoes are a regular, near-weekly occurrence. They want to help there, and only there. 

From storm shelters and basements, they tell Alaine about the rest of the world, all the people they could be helping with their inherited powers. But there’s no moving them; Alaine cares about their home, and no one else’s. 

In their third storm shelter of the month, they watch on Crowley’s mobile as California gets eaten by wildfire. 

“Did I ever take you to Los Angeles, angel? Never cared much for America, but they had some of the best sushi I’ve ever eaten there.” 

Aziraphale rests his head on Crowley’s shoulder. “I can’t recall.” 

***

In England, the chalk cliffs crumble, sweeping the south of the country into the Channel. 

“I suppose our little cottage is gone, then,” says Aziraphale, when he hears. 

“Probably gone a long time ago, angel,” Crowley replies. “Best not to think about it.” 

***

They don’t talk about what happened to the Bentley. 

***

There are others, after Alaine. But no one comes close to Adam, or to Amita. Anneke is so anxious she can barely leave her house; Aiko is traumatized after Japan sinks into the sea. 

There is sickness, and disease. Viruses mutate before cures can be found, bacteria becomes resistant, then hungry. 

There are no more bees. 

People try to leave, of course. Great ships take off from South Africa, Siberia, the empty desert of what used to be Nevada. But more often than not, someone on board is infected, despite all precautions. Mars has not been the promised land it seemed to be at first. The ships aim for Io, for Ganymede, for Europa, but nothing makes it past the asteroid belt. 

When Arie dies—like the rest of them, at 101—they have gone through nine reincarnations of Adam. The human population has peaked, and peaked, and peaked. Now it’s dropping, plummeting, and they can’t stop it. 

TOLD YOU IT NEVER GETS EASIER. 

Azrael is there again. They see him all the time, now. And War, and Famine, and Pollution. Even Pestilence has come out of retirement for the occasion. It’s like they’re all old friends. They wave to him and Crowley, sometimes. “Just doing our jobs!” they call, over the flattened houses, the burnt fields, the plague pits. 

The smoke from the fires is everywhere, and something is wrong with the water. The fights over what remains are endless, brutal. 

There aren’t enough people, but there are too many who need their help, and they don’t have enough time. 

“If only they would stop hurting each other. If only they would stop _ fighting _ each other,” Aziraphale says. Crowley clasps his hand but says nothing. It’s so hard to get him to talk, these days. Aziraphale would give anything, anything, for one more night in his old bookshop, for wine and for Crowley, drunk and sunglasses askew, arguing with him about… Was it gorillas? Or dolphins? 

Aziraphale can’t recall. They’ve both been extinct for centuries, now, anyway. 

Azrael shrugs, skeletal wings lifting to the sky. THEY’RE ONLY HUMAN. WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? 

And then he’s gone, but Aziraphale’s throat tightens. He’ll be back soon enough. 

***

There’s the tiniest flicker of hope, with Aix. And that’s perhaps the cruelest part. 

He tries, and Aziraphale tries, and Crowley tries, and for a moment—in the grand scheme of things the tiniest, most microscopically small moment—he thinks that they might have a shot at preventing the world from ending, once again. 

But then Aix is infected, and he dies in their arms on the side of a broken road in what was once the desert, just a few miles away from where there used to be a wall, and a garden, and an apple, and a tree. He is 33. 

“I’m sorry,” Aix chokes out, valiant to the end. “I tried, I— Forgive me—” 

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Aziraphale whispers. “Rest now, my dear.” 

Aix’s eyes go blank, the light rushing out all at once. Aziraphale shuts them with his thumb, and looks up to find Azrael waiting. 

He swallows. “How many are left, then? A thousand? A hundred?" He pauses. "A dozen?” 

Azrael says nothing. Beside him, Crowley tears at his hair and howls at the sky. 

She says nothing, too. 

***

The staircase in Jasmine Cottage creaks, and when Anathema tries to tiptoe down it at 2am, they look over at her from their spot on the sofa, where they’d been talking quietly. They both raise their eyebrows in unison. 

“Sneaking out?” Crowley asks. 

Anathema’s hand comes to rest on the swell of her stomach. “She makes it hard to sleep. Sometimes I go for walks at night.” She winces, then rubs at her side. “You can come, if you don’t tell Newt. He worries.” 

They don’t go far, just along the road to the corner of the green and a wooden bench where Anathema stops to rest. Thanksgiving at Jasmine Cottage has been a tradition since the year after the Apocalypse that didn’t, a little longer than a decade ago. None of them can bring themselves to get too excited about such a ridiculous American holiday, but Aziraphale likes the turkey, and Crowley likes the wine and the chance to bitch about the Puritans and their smallpox blankets with Anathema. Although they almost always stay over, neither of them have thought to take a walk through Tadfield at night, usually preferring to stay up talking and drinking in the cottage’s little living room. 

The stars are outstanding, clear and bright, and they take Aziraphale’s breath away. 

“Good Lord,” he murmurs, overcome. “I’d forgotten what the light pollution in London does to the view.” 

“It’s mostly Adam, I think,” says Anathema. “I’ve never seen them look like this anywhere but Tadfield.” 

Crowley has taken his sunglasses off and sat down next to Anathema. Aziraphale settles in on the other side, and for a while, they just look. 

“You know,” Anathema begins, “in school they taught us that the stars are so far away, that what we’re seeing of them now is just like… a snapshot of them, back in time. Years and years, ages and ages ago. That it takes so long for their light to reach us, that by the time it’s here, the stars could be completely different.” 

“Yeah,” Crowley says quietly. “Yeah, that’s right.” 

“Different constellations, different galaxies. Supernovas. Red dwarfs,” she continues. “Or whatever. I don’t know much about that kind of stuff.” 

“Mmm,” says Crowley. 

“And they could even… they could just be gone. They could _ all _ be gone. These stars could have blinked out of existence a hundred years ago, and we’d never even know.” She’s rubbing her palm over her stomach again, now, and her voice has gone all whispery. 

“We’d know,” Crowley tells her, and takes her hand, but Aziraphale doesn’t understand how he can be so sure. 

Aziraphale watches the sky, watches the lights sparkling, the galaxies curling and shimmering far in the distance, a thousand years and more into the past. 

Anathema exhales, a soft, shivery thing. “You would know, wouldn’t you?” She breathes unsteadily for a moment. “God. We must all be like _ ants _ to the two of you,” she says, and when he looks at her face, turned up to the sky, he can see the tears running down her cheeks. 

“Oh, my _ dear_,” Aziraphale says, and puts his hand on the swell of her belly. Beneath his palm, he can feel the child push up to meet him, then pull away. 

May the Lord bless you and keep you, he thinks, and says, “You are everything. _ Everything. _ Every last one of you.” 

***

They watch the world end from Alpha Centauri. 

Earth lists in orbit, wobbling. It hurts. 

Everything hurts. 

“Do you remember when we first met?” Crowley asks him. His hand is tight around his, long fingers wrapped through his own. 

“Of course I do, you old serpent,” Aziraphale says, and despite the scene in front of them there’s a hint of fondness in his voice. “My wily adversary.” 

Crowley laughs, and Aziraphale’s heart lifts at the sound. It’s been so long since he’s heard it. “They told me to get up to the Garden and make some trouble.” 

“Well, you certainly did that, dearest.” 

Crowley squeezes his hand. “And you? What were your instructions?” 

Aziraphale thinks back, millennia upon millennia. “Guard the tree of knowledge, if I recall correctly. Well, you know how that went down. Like a lead balloon, I think the phrase goes,” he says, just to make Crowley laugh again, and he smiles when he’s successful. 

“Let’s see,” he continues. “Guard the tree of knowledge, watch over the humans. Keep them… from.” He swallows. “From harm.” His voice breaks. Light years in front of them, the Earth tilts a little more. “Oh God. Oh God, I’ve failed so spectacularly.” 

“Angel,” Crowley says. “Don’t. We did the best we could.” 

“I shouldn’t have given them the sword,” Aziraphale whispers. 

“No,” Crowley says, firmly. “That was good, what you did. You were trying to protect them. I… Maybe I shouldn’t have tempted them with the apple.” He pauses. “They’d be safe now, if I hadn’t.” 

Aziraphale shakes his head, certain. “No. No, that was a good thing _ you _ did, Crowley. The first of many. You helped them. You _ freed _ them.”

“And look what they did with it.” Crowley sounds as tired as he feels. 

“Well, they can’t be as competent as the two of us.” 

He’s rewarded with another laugh, softer, this time, and he smiles, staring, watching the empty Earth spin. “It was good that they had free will. I just wish they had… I wish they’d done something better with it. I wish _ we _ could have done something.”

“Like what?” 

“Shielded them, somehow. From each other. From themselves.” 

“We did the best we could,” Crowley repeats, and squeezes his hand again. 

We, Aziraphale thinks. We. He thinks it’s only the two of them left in the universe, now. It’s been more than a thousand years since they’ve heard from Heaven or Hell. The blackness of space seems silent, empty and unending. 

We. Just the two of us. Our own side. 

Because despite all the times he’d thought he was alone, Crowley had been right there with him. He thinks of Crowley’s hand in his own, his face through the years. The garden and the ark and the oysters and Hamlet. Crowley and Adam, Crowley and Anathema, Crowley and Joy, Crowley and Amita. The bookshop and the Bentley and their little cottage by the sea. He can picture it all so clearly. 

But now, as he stares into the darkness, into the past, the stars start to disappear. On the farthest edge of his vision he can sense a yawning emptiness. 

Another memory hits him swiftly, and it hurts and he gasps with the force of it. Anathema, a thousand years ago, hugely pregnant and on the verge of tears, perched on a bench in Tadfield, staring up at the sky: _ These stars could have blinked out of existence a hundred years ago, and we’d never even know. _

_ We’d know_, Crowley had told her then, lifetimes ago, and now he says, “Angel. Angel, what’s She doing?” 

“I don’t know,” he cries, and the emptiness comes nearer, the darkness pressing in. He can hear a dull roar, growing louder. And then, suddenly, he understands. 

God is done playing games with the universe, and she’s wiping the board clean. 

“She’s ending it,” Crowley cries out. “She’s ending it, I can’t— I can’t stop it!” 

A dozen, a hundred, a thousand light years away, is someone watching them, holding Aix in their arms as he dies, begging for forgiveness? Curled up in bed as Amita makes breakfast and sings along to the stereo? Sitting on Anathema’s sofa after Christmas dinner, full of love and boozy cocoa? Extending their wings and taking the 11-year-old antichrist’s small hand in their own? 

Seven thousand years of love, a thousand years of freedom. 

It’s not enough. 

“Crowley,” he gasps. “I don’t want to leave you, I don’t want this to end.” He pulls him close, closer, already knowing that this is the last time he’ll hold him, the last time his hair will curl around his hands, the last time he’ll see his eyes, golden and beautiful, and now wide-eyed in terror. 

“Angel—” 

“Don’t forget,” Aziraphale begs him. 

“No, no, never, I won’t—”

And as if there’s a chance, the tiniest, smallest, infinitesimal chance, he takes the last of his power into himself, into his words, and commands, “Find me again.” 

“I will,” Crowley says. “Always, angel. I will, I will, I...”

But his voice is already fading, into the dark. 

***

  
  
  
  


How many light years away is it? Has it already happened? Is it happening still? 

  
  
  
  


***

An angel and a demon stand on the wall. 

“You what?” the demon asks, aghast and trying hard not to smile. 

“I gave it away!” the angel wails. “There are _ vicious animals_. It’s going to be cold out there and she’s expecting already and I said, ‘Here you go, flaming sword, don’t thank me—and don’t let the sun go down on you here.’” He takes a breath. “I did… I did keep the shield, though.” 

“Hmm?” The demon looks at him with interest, and the angel picks up the shield that’s been lying at his feet. He turns it so the demon can see the etching of wings on the edge, the pointed star in the center. 

“I do hope I didn’t do the wrong thing,” he says, inspecting the shield and frowning. 

“Oh, you’re an angel. I don’t think you can do the wrong thing,” the demon reassures him. 

The angel looks over, his shoulders sagging in relief. “Oh, oh thank— Oh, thank you.” He gives him a tentative smile. “Oh, it’s been bothering me.” 

“I’ve been worrying, too,” the demon murmurs. In the distance, Adam is fighting a lion with the flaming sword. “What if I did the right thing with the whole eat the apple bit? A demon can get into a lot of trouble for doing the right thing.” He pauses, smiles. “It’d be funny if we both got it wrong. Eh? If I did the good thing and you did the bad one?” 

The angel laughs for a moment before remembering himself. “No! It wouldn’t be funny at all.” 

The demon makes a face. “Meh.” 

The lion dies. Adam and Eve walk off, hand in hand. There are dark clouds in the sky, coming closer. 

“I wonder what I’ll need a shield for?” the angel says, looking at it again. He traces the edge, then hugs it to his chest. The dark clouds are on top of them now. 

The demon shrugs. “Sure it’ll come in handy eventually.” 

The first drops start to fall. And the angel, without thinking twice, like he’s done it a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times before, extends his wing. 

***

_ In the beginning, _

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally conceived as the Good Omens version of the Six Feet Under finale, but it spiraled out of control rather rapidly. It also owes a lot to The Dark Tower series by Stephen King—if you’ve read it you know what I’m talking about, and if you haven’t, spoilers! 
> 
> The words Aziraphale says over Anathema’s baby are the beginning of a very old prayer that has many names; being a Principality, I suspect he knows it in every language in (or no longer in) existence :) 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! This is kind of a new style for me and took a long time to finish, so please let me know what you think.


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